Digital imaging devices (e.g., cameras, camcorders, etc.) are highly available and very popular among consumers. Many of these digital imaging devices are capable of capturing both still images and video.
Digital cameras are increasingly popular and technology advances have resulted in these cameras having the capability to capture video data as well as high resolution still images. A digital camera captures an optical image (e.g., a subject, scene, or view) in elemental portions and generates an electronic signal that is representative of the subject, scene, or view. Unlike conventional film cameras that use a photo-responsive film as the image capturing medium, digital cameras typically use a photosensor array, such as one or more charge coupled devices (CCDs). The camera's optics focus an optical image of a photographic subject on an image plane of the photosensor array, which then generates digital data representative of the optical image. This digital data may then be stored and used to generate a display image of the photographic subject, for example, an image displayed on a liquid crystal display (LCD) or an image printed on paper by a printer.
Many of these digital cameras can operate in a first capture mode for capturing still image data, which includes one or more “still images” (i.e., digital data representing one or more optical images). The resolution of each of the still images (e.g., typically 2.1 mega pixels or greater) is usually higher than a standard “video frame” resolution. These digital cameras can also operate in a second capture mode for capturing relatively low resolution video data. In the second capture mode, the digital camera captures multiple time-sequenced-still images (known as “video frames”) per second. A typical capture rate is 30 video frames per second. Such video frames are composed of “video data”. The resolution of video data is usually lower (typically 0.3 mega pixels or less) than the resolution of the still image data. Operating in the first capture mode, the digital camera can capture the high resolution still images, but cannot process the high resolution still images as quickly as it can process the video frames captured using the second capture mode. For this reason, high resolution still image generally cannot be used to produce a “video” (a series of video frames used to simulate motion when “played back” in sequence. Therefore, if a user desires to capture both video and high resolution still images of a scene, the user would have to operate first in one capture mode and then in the other. However, in the time it takes to switch capture modes, the user may miss the desired still picture or desired video.